Anticipation

I knew it would be a hot one today, and it was. The first thing I did, though, was rip the valve stem pumping up my tire before I even opened the door, so I got to start the day off by changing a flat. It wouldn't be the last. Once I finally got out into the thick air and hit the road I still had plenty of time in hand, though. This time of year I'm always up early and the 7 am Giro start time is an easy target. I wasn't very far down the road when Mark G. rolled up alongside, and then as we approached Canal Blvd. we saw a group of four or five turn onto Carrollton ahead of us. It's pretty unusual for me to run into other riders on my way out to the lakefront, and a whole group is really strange, so I figured something must be up. We caught up to them just as they were turning into City Park to take a look at the criterium course. There is a lot of anticipation building up around here for the district championship criterium that's coming up in a few weeks. So we rode a lap around the course and headed back out to the lake, arriving right on schedule to catch the group just as it rolled out from the parking lot.

Looking around as we rode slowly along Lakeshore Drive picking up riders, I knew it would be fast today. (Those first two pictures show part of the group riding over the Bayou St. John overpass.) With most of the local riders in town and no races nearby, the Saturday Giro was clearly about to become the weekend's de facto race.

Things took off pretty quickly once we hit Hayne Blvd. and never showed much of a sign of slowing down. When Rick suddenly started going backwards through the pack due to a flat, only few riders stopped. The front of the pack, I'm sure, never knew someone had flatted. Then, as we turned onto Chef Highway, I took a roofing nail though my rear tire. In fact, it went through the tire, tube, rim strip, and into a spoke hole. We almost needed a crowbar to get the thing out. Again, the front of the pack never knew, but a number of people stopped, and once I got the new tube pumped up to maybe 70 psi we took off. We had a good fast paceline going and met the front part of the Giro on their way back about a mile past the turnaround.

The return trip was mostly just as fast as the way out had been. A lot of riders were anticipating the Goodyear Sign sprint, and when we all had to stop for a red light about kilometer before it people were not happy! I never did make it back up near the front for that one. It stayed fast afterward, though, and I ended up sprinting up the Casino bridge and about halfway up the Seabrook bridge before my legs decided they'd had enough for today.

When I got home I settled down and patched about a dozen tubes, throwing away another five or six that weren't salvageable. I should probably swap out that worn-down rear tire for a nice Michelin Pro Race that I took off my racing wheels earlier this year when I bought new rubber for those, but this particular set of Vredsteins have kind of turned into a science experiment for me. I think I might get the rear one down to the cords in another few weeks!

I just got about 150 megs of photos from Malcolm Schuler from the Tour de La. Probably won't get those up on the website until tomorrow at best. Going to a little work-related party in a couple of hours. Hope they have good wine....

Relative Humidity

It felt hot this morning. Not the Arizona type of hot where the heat index is lower than the actual temperature thanks to a 20% relative humidity, but the New Orleans type of hot where 89 degrees "feels like" 97 because at 60% relative humidity the sweat just rolls down your nose and drips off onto the ground like a leaky faucet. If it doesn't actually evaporate, it's really just a waste.

There's a common saying around here that goes "It's not the heat, it's the humidity." I should mention that there's an equally common version of the same that goes "It's not the heat, it's the stupidity." Indeed, when it gets really hot and humid your brain tends to turn into warm oatmeal and your walking speed drops down to match that of the homeless guy on the corner. Heat can be a great equalizer, indeed. Unfortunately, it also tends to make it harder to tell the stupid ones from the normal ones. Especially around election time, apparently.

So anyhow, we had a nice tame ride up on the levee this morning with about a dozen heat-dazed guys sharing the work. Along the way we picked up Howard who was riding his Bianchi track bike with a freewheel and brake, and Realdo who was out for an easy spin. I asked him about the Tour of Ohio and he said that the stages were mostly too short so everything tended to end up in a dangerous pack sprint. He said that there was one stage that had some real climbing in it that split the pack pretty well, though.

About half-way back from the turnaround this morning the pace picked up and we actually did some real training for a while there. I guess that's a good thing, right?

So somebody should tell Jason Ham that the Mistress was impressed with his photo, or more specifically, the view from his wheel. Compliments of that sort are not doled out arbitrarily, you know.

This weekend is looking like it will be a rather domestic one -- a couple of Giro rides, some painting, hedge-trimming, etc., and probably some time spent re-organizing the NOBC race day supplies so they will be ready for the next time. Speaking of which, I guess we should find out what the Lakeshore Drive situation is this year and whether we might be able to get the Rocktoberfest race back out there.

I thought Austin King had a particularly funny report about the Colossal Burger today.

Meanwhile, I have a ton of stuff to do at work today, so I'd better get on it...

When it Rains ...

... it pours. Seems like last-minute tasks are popping up around here like earmarks in an election year.


There was no riding for me this morning. Instead I was rushing up the river to Baton Rouge for an 8:30 am meeting that I didn't know I had to attend until a couple of days ago. I got on the road shortly before 7:00 and things were going smoothly on the interstate despite the big speed trap (five patrol cars, radar, laser, and an airplane -- which I spotted in time to dial it down from 80 mph) until I hit Baton Rouge's rush hour traffic. How do people do this every day? It's no wonder they occasionally go postal out on the road.


I finally got to the Board of Regents' meeting about ten minutes late. Of course, I myself would never be so rude as to schedule an 8:30 am meeting that I expected people from Baton Rouge to attend. So anyway, it was a pretty decent initial meeting of their Master Planning for Research workgroup, although I didn't get out of there until nearly noon. I stopped by the local Whole Foods to get a sandwich and check my email and of course there was a fresh email about some rush work that needs to be done (i.e. by me) for testimony concerning the Veterans Administration Hospital in New Orleans that's due July 5 and about which I will be learning a lot over the next few days. Meanwhile I have a monitoring meeting coming up tomorrow with someone from the state's office of community services tomorrow for the $13M we received last year. At least that one's in the afternoon so I'll be able to ride tomorrow morning. The real question is whether I'll actually climb on the bike this evening after work. I already feel fat. We shall see...


I was up late last night updating the LCCS rankings with the results from the last two races, but since I didn't finish that until around 1 a.m., I still haven't uploaded any of it to the LAMBRA website. Maybe tonight. I've been pretty busy lately, and when that happens it always has a negative effect on my already marginal bike maintenance habits. On yesterday's ride I noticed that my old Campi shifters (the thumb shifters) weren't engaging the little toothed wheel all the time. That always happens after I've been dripping sweat on them for a couple of weeks and the corrosion starts to build up. The fact that the return spring on the right-hand one has been broken for the last three or four years doesn't help. So yesterday I got that cleaned up, and I also lubricated the chain with some nice fresh Prolink that I picked up at The Spokesman last Friday night while we were doing Friday registration for the Tour. While I was there, I noticed that they also had Rock-n-Roll too, so I picked up a bottle of that also. Good stuff. So now my shifters work again, more or less, and my chain is nice and clean, but the rest of the bike is still pretty nasty. Maybe I'll do a good cleaning job this weekend. Or maybe I'll just wait until I get caught out in the rain again, because this time of year, when it rains...

Something Different

Even a creature of habit needs a change once in a while. This morning the prospect of another training ride on the levee seemed distinctly unappetizing so I thought I'd do something different. I headed in the opposite direction, out to the lakefront, retracing a training ritual abandoned years ago. It felt refreshing to be out there jockeying with the morning traffic and dodging the bumps and potholes of Carrollton Avenue. Along the way, I thought I'd make a loop of the planned criterium course for the LAMBRA crit championships that are coming up later in the month.

The course starts and finishes on Lelong Avenue, I presume, since it's just about the only straight stretch of road on the whole circuit. The first photo is looking away from Wisner Blvd. toward the museum that is in the middle of the loop. From here the course curves right and crosses a bridge over the lagoon, then it curves left onto part of the old Roosevelt Mall loop where there should be a little bit of shade thanks to the oak trees, before curving left again, crossing another bridge, and then looping around the back of the museum beore making a right turn back onto Lelong for a long straight that ends with a U-turn. Other than that U-turn it seems like a fairly non-technical course that will probably be pretty fast. Then again, I don't really know what it will be like at race speeds. The road surface is mostly old concrete which is in reasonably good shape except for a few wide seams between sections. There aren't really any sharp corners on the entire loop.

Once I got to the lakefront, I met up with a couple of people and rode with them along

Lakeshore Drive before finally heading back home down Wisner and Carrollton. I have to admit, I was kind of enjoying mixing it up with the commuter traffic. I guess that means I've been spending too much time on the levee! Riding by yourself always seems so different from riding with a group. If properly motivated, it can be a much better workout. Of course, I'm not always properly motivated, so that's where the group rides become invaluable. You also tend to do a lot more accelerations from slow speeds when riding on the streets in the city. That's probably a good thing.

So three of our researchers scored big in the latest La. Board of Regents Research Commercialization and Educational Enhancement Program competition, scoring in excess of $15M in funding for three major projects. I may have to take back some of those bad things I said about the Board of Regents a few weeks ago. Anyway, it will be a huge help for three of our best research teams.

I was over at my father's place yesterday evening to lend a hand. He's quite glad to be finally fully de-catheterized, but I think it is finally sinking in that he will never fully regain some of the motor skills he lost because of the stroke.

Midsummer Lull

With the 2007 edition of the Tour de LA wrapped up, we'll have a little midsummer lull until the next big race on June 22. The good news is that that race, the La/Ms state championship criterium, will be held right here in New Orleans. It's so rare to have a race in town nowadays, and I do miss the old days when you get in a decent racing season without ever driving more than a couple of hours. Steve put up a bunch of nice photos last night from the Road Race (he was in the following car, I think) and the Criterium. The one above is the Cat. 1,2,3 pack coming through the start/finish with one lap to go. It must have taken me four tries to get the results uploaded correctly to the USAC database last night. I sure with they would write some code so that when I upload an Excel file, which they say they can handle, it doesn't completely screw up the dates and times. As it stands, I have to convert all of the times to text, which is not as simple as you might think, and then if I go back and try to put in the leading zeros that get cut out, it converts the field back to time/date format. Very frustrating. So when you see a time like 6:7 that should read 6:07, now you'll know why.

This morning it was overcast out at the levee and I wondered if we might even get some rain, but as it turned out the only droplets that were falling were sweat. It was seriously humid and warm and if I don't wash my gloves soon the neighbors are going to start complaining about the stench. The group today was pretty big and the pace going out was fast. Tim and Reo, just back from the Tour of Ohio, were there for a little while but I never really got a chance to get the scoop on how the race went. Then Howard showed up on his TT bike and proceeded to take pulls at 30 mph. Of course, once he'd pull off, the pace would slow down to 24 while everyone recovered, so basically it had no effect whatsoever on average speed and a big effect on the general level of irritation. I must have heard the comment "Why does Howard do that?" a hundred times over the last few years. Anyway, after the turnaround it stayed slow for a long time, but eventually got rolling pretty fast again. At one point I thought I'd drop all the way to the back for a while and was surprised to discover that the "back" was long gone. Don't you just hate it when that happens?

So when people pre-register and then can't come and ask for a refund, should you do that? We usually do, minus the registration fee, but I can see where it might get out of hand.

Another Tour in the Books

The 5:45 cellphone alarm went off at the Hampton Inn and I jumped across the room to silence it, squinting in the darkness at the blue screen. Before I packed up the laptop, I checked the weather.com radar and was shocked to see rain in the area. That's never a welcome sight on the morning of a criterium, especially when you are going to be out there all morning. There were a few little raindrops on the windshield as we drove over to the course, but luckily that was all we saw for the rest of the day. The criteriums went off pretty well. Keith and Brian and Robin et al, along with the increasingly well-paid Covington police department, had the course under control and we were able to get the first race started with minimal delay. Somehow we got behind on the schedule by the end of the day, so I'll have to see if I can figure out what happened there. The Women and Juniors race is the first race of the day and it's always confusing. Some riders are lapped numerous times, even though the course is nearly a mile long, and it always takes a little while to sort out the final results. Otherwise, things went smoothly and the races looked to be good. The Cat. 1,2,3 race was clearly the fastest, and on this city course with the sidewalks right up against the curb it's exciting to feel the rush and the wind as the group blows by each lap. The women's race ended up with a tie on GC, thanks to one rider's success at nabbing bonus points in the crit. Luckily Shane's expert finish camera work got us placings for everyone in the RR and Crit, so the tie was broken, just barely, according to the rules. The last race of the day was the Cat. 1,2,3 race and it's the one I always look forward to. For one thing, it's relatively easy to score because the pack tends to stay together, only shedding riders toward the end. The other thing is that it's always pretty fast and animated and there's usually a great sprint at the end. The only problem this year was a little pile-up early in the race that sent local rider Ben Schuler to the hospital with a broken elbow that will require some hardware to fix. I think it was probably Ben's first race in over a year, too.

As Mark and I drove back home across the lake, after the awards ceremony at Vic & Natly's, an Abita Turgo Dog, and a fried catfish po-boy, I remember thinking that I felt just as wiped out as I do when I actually race all weekend. Then I remembered that I still had a ton of work still to do to post results to the website, upload data to USAC, fill out the Chief Ref reports and post-event stuff, etc. Meanwhile, Laura has a number of abandoned wheels to return to their owners, various payments to be made, etc., etc. It will be another week yet before we're really finished, but it's a good feeling to be able to put on a good race with good people and give something back to the sport. I know all of our volunteers feel the same way, too. I'm just glad I only have to do this once or twice a year!

Workin' the Tour

So this morning I donned my traditional officiating hat and met the extraordinary NOBC Tour de La crew, along with our Chief Judge Shane, at the little gazebo in Abita Springs. Thanks to a good turnout for Friday night number pickup and pre-registration, race day registration went smoothly while Robin set up the start area and posted signs along the 3-mile time trial route. We got started a few minutes after 8 am, sending around 160 riders off at 30-second intervals. The only real problem was some construction going on down the road that produced a steady stream of big dump trucks. I had to hold a few riders for an extra 30 seconds so they wouldn't get too tangled up in the slow-moving trucks. I had the TT results wrapped up and printed out pretty quickly and I posted them at the road race course an hour or so before the 1 am start.

The road race always feels kind of chaotic and out of control. Thankfully we have some great club members who make things work relatively smoothly. A pretty small but dedicated group somehow gets five wheel cars lined up, coordinating with five moto refs, numerous police officers, radio communications, water and sports drinks, and even chilled watermelon. Robin spent a couple of hours getting the course ready, putting up signs, patching holes, sweeping corners, etc., and somehow we were ready to go by 1 pm. There was a pretty big pile-up near the end of the Cat. 5's first lap, but there were no other crashes this year. Instead, there were a lot of flats. We never did figure out why that was, but a couple of the follow cars said that they had five or six flats to deal with. Most of the groups made it to the end more or less intact this year. No big breaks were able to survive, although a small group did get off the front of the Cat. 1,2,3 group near the end. With a little tailwind along the finish stretch, we had to rely a lot on the video camera to sort things out. Shane did his usual great job of that and by the time we were finished cleaning up the area after the race he had finished all but the Cat. 5 results. I got most of those entered into the computer on the drive back to the hotel, after which Shane emailed me the Cat. 5 results. The preliminary results were up on the website by about 8 pm. They're not very pretty, but at least there's a chance some of the riders will be able to check them out tonight. Hope we didn't screw them up too badly.

Tomorrow it will be another early start to get things set up for the first criterium at 7:30.

Clear Skies and TT Bikes

It was one of those mornings when getting out of bed and onto the road was a challenge. Once I was out the door, though, I was pleased to find that the relative humidity was relatively low, which would at least cut down on the sweat seeping into the shifter mechanicals. They always start to get pretty gunked up this time of year and with all the salty sweat the bike's exposed to, anything that can corrode will corrode. The sky was clear and blue and the weekend forecast is calling for hot temperatures with highs in the 90s and little chance of rain.

The group up on the levee was quite large today, and I guess I must have missed the memo about TT bikes because there were a bunch of them in the group today. Frankly, I don't know how they do it. It's quite frightening enough on my regular bike with my hands inches from the brakes and most of my weight behind the bottom bracket. There was hardly any wind when we started, but as we got farther out we picked up a little tailwind and the pace got fairly fast. Of course, that meant that the return trip was largely into an increasing headwind. That resulted in a relatively small group taking pulls at the front and a lot of people sitting in. The ones who will be racing this weekend, however, had valid excuses. Toward the end of the ride the pace started to get kind of erratic, partly because of the increasing pedestrian and truck-crossing density I suppose, and partly because of a few surges at the front.

So I got the official Road Championship results from Shane today. Hopefully I'll find some time to get the LCCS rankings updated before the Tour de La. Yesterday I picked up the big LAMBRA race kit, which is a white shipping container containing all of the finish line camera stuff, radios, etc. There was also a big tent thing and the new finish line and 200M feather flags. We'll have a lot of stuff to get over to the Northshore Friday afternoon! Robin's working on printing the Race Bibles, the hole on the crit course has been patched, and so things are more or less ready to go assuming lots of folks show up to volunteer. Online registration ends at midnight and right now there are a bit over 100 registered, to that's looking fairly normal. I think the Cat. 1,2,3 race will be pretty much wide open this year with both Herring and Memphis off at other stage races. The Cat. 4 race is looking to be big and competitive and the Women's race will have a really good turnout too. The Cat. 5 race still has 15 slots open, so that's good.

The Dad was in for a little surgery this morning and reports are that it went well. I know he will be glad to be rid of that suprapubic catheter. Who wouldn't? The Daughter should be hitting the road in about an hour for the long drive down from Iowa. Tomorrow is looking to be pretty busy!

Tame for a Tuesday

This morning's group ride was pretty tame, at least for a Tuesday. With a number of the usual perpetrators of pain notably absent, and sufficient humidity to grow mushrooms on your shoes, the ride was quite civilized today. There was even a long stretch of smooth double paceline on the way back. With the local riders getting geared up for this weekend's stage race, one of the few races we have that's so close to home, I guess a lot of people are easing off a notch already in preparation. Personally, I guess Tuesday is usually the last day I'll do a really hard ride if I have a big race coming up on the weekend. I've still got a lot of stuff to do before the race -- definitely more than if I was going to be riding it. I finally put the Race Bible up on the website and made a little to-do list of things I need to get or check -- things like the results spreadsheet, batteries of various sorts, printer ink cartridges, etc. Plus, I still need to track down Robin and hope that he can print the paper copies of the Race Bible as usual. It will all be complicated by other commitments both tonight and tomorrow night.

The Daughter is driving down from Iowa City with her roomate to attend some sort of shower or something and won't be arriving until maybe 3 am Friday morning. Since they'll be leaving Sunday morning I probably won't see much of her at all. She called earlier today to say she had gotten the oil changed and that the transmission fluid and coolant were both low and there was a vacuum leak somewhere. I told her to check fluids along the way and not to sweat the vacuum leak, since it's apparently been going on for some time now anyway.

So I got a text message yesterday evening from Kenny B. saying "I got 7th!" He's up at the Tour of Ohio with the Herring Guys, and as you can see from the photo, he's making a spectacle of himself as usual! When I saw the photo, the first thing I thought was "why would they bring latex gloves to a bike race?" Anyway, it turned out he wasn't 7th after all, but was actually 12th, which isn't too shoddy anyway for a technical criterium with 127 riders and a number of pro teams in attendance.

Monday Means Recovery

I guess everybody got in a lot of hard riding last weekend because today it was just Adam and me up on the levee. The rest of the usual group must have stayed in bed this morning, either to recover from the weekend or to get a head start on tapering for the upcoming Tour de Louisiane. To tell the truth, I was feeling pretty sluggish myself, so we did a nice easy spin in sub-20 territory.

By the time I was ready for work the sky was getting pretty grey and there was a light drizzle. I was lucky to make it downtown before the skies really opened up. It rained off-and-on all day with another big storm just as I got home. On the plus side, it kept the temperatures down, so that was nice.

I got a text message from Kenny Bellau saying that he took 7th in the first day's Criterium up at the Tour of Ohio. A couple of weeks ago he was saying that he felt like he was "at about 80%" fitness-wise. Looks like he's about back in racing shape now for the first time, really, since Katrina.

So yesterday morning on my way out to the lake I took a ride around the state championship criterium course in City Park here in New Orleans. The race hasn't been officially announced yet, so I guess there could still be some changes, but probably not to the course. Anyway, it looks like a really fast and non-technical course to me. Although there are a lot of turns, they are almost all easy sweeping curves rather than sharp 90-degree ones. There's also a U-turn. I've never really figured out how to handle a U-turn. All I know is that you always come out of them a lot slower than you went in, and that means a big acceleration every time. Should be interesting.

Hopefully I can finish updating the Tour de La Race Bible tomorrow morning. There's not really much that needs to be changed, and most of it's already done, so I'll basically just need to print out a clean original so we can make copies. A couple of things I'm adding this year: Results from Saturday will be posted to the website that night so riders can see where they stand on GC without trying to find me. Also, I put the latitude and longitude of the Road Race start in the Race Bible from the GPS folks. Online registration is looking pretty good, just a little bit lower than last year for some reason, but I think we'll have a good turnout. Curtis sent me two CDs of photos from the Master's and Cat. 1,2,3 races in Natchez last week. Maybe I can find time to put them into a web album some time tomorrow. All I know for sure is it won't happen tonight because I'm going to be asleep in about ten minutes...

Reconnaissance

Saturday was the day for a combination training / reconnaissance ride on the Tour de La Road Race course. (Oh, wait -- "Light My Fire" just came on the radio, so I'm going to have to take a little break...) OK, I'm back now. (Miss me?) So anyway, I drove up to the TDL course with Quentin and met up with a group of about ten at Cucumber Corner. The 15-mile loop that we've been using since last year is a pretty good one. Every time I go up there for a group ride, the guys are saying they'll ride four or five laps, but we never make more than three. Perhaps that's because it's always shortly before the Tour and the other riders are all thinking about the race, so one lap always ends up being pretty fast.

This little course features nice smooth asphalt throughout and an unrelenting series of little rollers that will definitely get your attention after a lap or two. Our group lost a couple of guys right off the bat, even though the first lap wasn't very fast. On the second lap, though, a few of the Fish House guys kicked it up to race pace for a while. We had a few Cat. 5s from our club who got gapped off, so rather than bury myself to close the gap, I stuck with them and tried to get a paceline going. It was a lot harder than I expected, though. The hills were killing them and every time we'd hit a good one the group would splinter. Luckily, everyone stopped at the store where the start/finish is after the second lap so we got to regroup. The third lap was more civilized and everyone stayed together.

After the ride, a few of us drove back around the course re-painting the arrows, sweeping gravel off of the corners, moving a downed tree that was blocking half of the road, etc. The course is in pretty good shape. I kind of wish I was riding it next week, but duty calls and I'll be officiating along with Shane. Mark, Quentin and I stopped at "Vic & Natly's" in Covington, where we hold the awards ceremony, for a "swimp" po-boy before driving back across the causeway. I was pretty tired, or maybe just dehydrated, by the time I got home.

Sunday was Giro Ride day for me. When I arrived at Lakeshore Drive this morning I found barricades and a fence all the way across the road. I guess it's good that finally, twenty months later, they're finally fixing the hurricane damage, but really, was it necessary to shut down the entire four lanes? Of course, it didn't stop the Giro Ride which simply rode around the barricades and occasionally took to the sidewalks in order to get by. There was a typical group, except that a few of the regulars were missing. Tim, Realdo and Bain are up at the Tour of Ohio that starts tomorrow, and I think a few of the guys were going to ride the Tour course today. It was a confusing Giro today. A few little groups and a pack that wasn't too interested in working made for an odd day. By the time we hit Hayne Blvd on the way back there were a few guys up the road and the pack didn't really seem to care, so I rolled off the front for a while and was eventually joined by a few more guys. Eventually Brett showed up with his TT bike and things picked up considerably. After trading a few pulls, Brett got on the front and pulled nonstop for the last few miles. It was exactly like sitting behind a motor, especially since he barely slowed down to climb the overpass where everyone but me dropped off.

So the rest of Sunday was spent inhaling paint fumes in the kitchen. Did I mention how much I dislike painting? This little kitchen of ours features three full-size windows three doors and door frames, and two sets of cabinets, all of which need to be stripped and painted. It would literally be easier to gut the room and start over rather than try to strip and re-paint everything.

Out the Door

Though I woke up in plenty of time, I was sorely tempted to sleep late this morning. I guess I stayed up too late last night vegetating across from the television. I think I rode the remote up and down the channel lineup twenty times, never finding anything of interest. I really wonder why I'm paying $50 a month to pipe commercials into my living room. Well, anyway, I did of course finally make it out that old door and onto the street where I knew I'd be happier.

I was surprised by the number of riders we had for the Friday ride. I guess there was a dozen today, and obviously some of them actually wanted to do some training. The usual 20 mph rule went out the window pretty fast, and with a little tailwind pushing us along the speed stayed in the mid-20s most of the way out. It's funny how everybody is Superman when there's a tailwind. After we turned around into the wind we were back down to 21 or so and most of the group got into a little circular paceline at the front.

Tomorrow we'll be doing a few laps of the Tour de La course, partially as a training ride and partially as a reconnaissance trip. A few of us (I hope) will stick around afterward and clean up the corners so they're not too bad for the race the following weekend.

Déjà Vu All Over Again

Man, today's long levee ride seemed like déjà vu "all over again!" There was a big group of twenty or so, and once things got rolling it just kept getting faster and faster. At one point, maybe halfway out, I took a pull at the front and dropped back. The next couple of guys pulled off as soon as they hit the front and so they were dropping back in front of me. Normally, that's a good thing because I'd get a nice draft as I drifted to the end of the paceline, but in this case I guess someone at the front started to accelerate and I knew we were dropping back way too slowly. I told the rider in front "pedal faster" but it was already too late. The paceline was coming apart and we weren't going nearly fast enough. At those kinds of speeds, you can't afford to let any little gaps open up and you especially can't afford having to close the ones that do. It took a big effort to get a wheel after that, and in the meantime a few riders went off the front. Eventually we got re-organized and slowly reeled in the escapees. The last couple of miles, though, got ridiculously fast again (I had a max speed of 33 mph) and the paceline splintered. At least the first half of the ride back was much easier, and even though the pace, and the headwind, picked up, Donald stayed near the front short-circuiting the rotation ahead of him. I think most everyone stayed together.

I hear Robin ended up in the ER last week to have a kidney stone removed. Yeouch!

So I listened to this week's Bicycle Radio.com show during lunch (it's live on Tuesdays, but you can listen to the archive any time) and they had a little interview, after the hilarious Bike Cops segment, with John Howard. Too bad I didn't catch the live show because I could have emailed in some interesting comments. John Howard won the first Tour de Louisiane, back around '72. The writeup on that race is actually on the website. In fact, you can see John in the blurry photo that I took with my Kodak Instamatic camera. He's the one in the white, black and yellow Raleigh jersey. So here we are getting ready for the 36th year of the Tour and John's still doing interviews to promote his coaching business. John was always a little strange. Sounds like that hasn't changed either!

Midweek in New Orleans

Another warm morning and a good turnout for the New Orleans levee ride. I counted about 20 riders at some point, which is a lot for a pre-work weekday training ride. I was feeling better today, perhaps more recovered than yesterday. Maybe it was that quart of Summer Gazpacho I made for dinner. V8 juice, garlic, tomatoes, garlic, onion, celery, cucumber, garlic, bell pepper, olive oil, vinegar, garlic, and an hour in the 'fridge. I always eat too much of that. Anyway, the pace was good - not too fast and not too slow - and so most of the group stayed together the whole way. Of course, we had to have the usual flat tire, but that's pretty normal too.

I talked with Realdo for a while. He was riding his older Look bike because his new bike is being shipped up to the Tour of Ohio stage race along with the other Herring team bikes. Too bad they will miss the Tour de La this year, but their absence might present some good opportunities for other teams in the area, and I'm sure their masters riders will carry the banner well anyway.

Preparations for the 36th annual Tour de La are ramping up and I really need to finish up the race bible in the next day or two. The town of Covington is busy patching a couple of holes on the crit course, no doubt turning them into nice little bumps instead. Keith is hustling for race volunteers as usual and Laura is sweating out the ever-escalating costs for police and stuff. I need to pick up the LAMBRA race kit from Bicycle World, since it came back from the road championships with Adam. We'll be having a group training ride on the TDL road course this Saturday, after which some of us will go around and clean up some of the loose gravel and stuff so the course will be in good shape for the following weekend. The Race to Recovery Criterium Championships look to be about ready to go at this point, and the Meridian-Cuba Challenge omnium should have its event permit and announcement in the next few days as well. I still need to get the road championship results from Shane so I can update the LCCS points and upload results to the USAC database. I also just found out that the new LCCS championship jerseys that I've been waiting on for the 2006 winners have are still in the "final proof" stage, so no telling when those will finally arrive. I think I may send those people last year's model if I have the right sizes and maybe follow up with the new ones when the finally arrive. I think I'm still missing mailing addresses for some of last year's winners, though.

On the home front, the work on the kitchen has been at a virtual standstill for the last month or two, and I've been basically 'on call' for my dad since his stroke, making trips over there every couple of days. He's scheduled for another little surgery June 21st, so I'm hoping that goes well and doesn't interfere with my officiating duties for the TDL the next weekend.

Restoration Row

This morning's long Levee Ride seemed hard to me for some reason. Maybe there's still a little lingering tiredness from last weekend, although if there is it isn't being manifested in the usual way -- sore legs. There was a good-sized group today, and we were already rolling pretty fast when I saw "Double Champion" Realdo go by in the opposite direction. Rob was out on his TT bike today, relentlessly pushing the pace, and every once in a while on the way back Howard would get on the front and take it up to 30 or 31 mph. It seemed like every time he did that, though, it was when I had just taken a pull. I hate it when you're dropping back after a pull and you're going faster than you were when you were on the front, and then you have to accelerate another couple mph just to get back in to the paceline. Anyway, I definitely got in a workout even though I didn't spend a whole lot of time on the front. At least the rather thick morning haze moderated the early morning sun a bit. I'm hoping the 20% chance of rain brings us a little summer afternoon thunderstorm to cool things down a bit before I head home. When the weather's like this, strong little heat-generated thunderstorms just pop up at random, dump an inch of rain on a few square miles, and dissipate as quickly as they formed. Trying to actually forecast where they will be is completely impossible.



It's another hot day in the big city today with a thick grey haze from all the moisture in the air. I had to stop by the ATM machine this morning on the way to work, but it wasn't as easy as usual. You see, my regular bank, which is only five or six blocks away and has been operating out of a trailer since Katrina, has finally started to rebuild the actual building and moved their operations about half a mile down busy Carrollton Avenue to another trailer. My best option now is to ride over to Tulane's uptown campus where there is a whole collection of ATM machines. So I head over there and discover that they've moved all the ATM machines into the new UC. After hunting around for a while I finally found them and got that taken care of, and decided I just had to pick up a cold coffee Granita at PJ's on the way so that I wouldn't be a bucket of sweat by the time I got to work. The nice thing about a Granita is that it comes in a plastic cup with a lid and it doesn't slosh around while you're riding your bike.



Shortly afer I finished it, about a quarter mile from work, I noticed a lot of activity along a row of classic New Orleans shotguns that I pass every day. The first one now consists of only the front wall, tentatively propped up with 2x4s. This is necessary because as long as you leave a wall (actually I thought it was two walls) standing then the job is technically a renovation and you don't have to request new zoning variances for setback from the property line. Since all these old houses are built right on the street, it's always an issue. If you had to satisfy current zoning setbacks on these tiny lots, you wouldn't have enough room left for FEMA trailer. Anyway, I stopped to take a photo and some of the workers who were sitting on the stoop asked "We gonna be in the paper?" I laughed and asked them if they were going to restore all of the houses. They said "Yep, come back in a few months and see." Hopefully they'll preserve some of the original character of those little houses.

We'll see...

Survival in Natchez (edited)

There was a good field for the combined Cat. 1/2 and Cat. 3 road race championships this year, and as I lined up for the 9 am start I wondered how long I'd be able to survive. That's one thing you never really know about road racing. Sometimes a combination of defensive riding, a large field, and gentle winds will keep you in the race for a long time even if you're obviously out-gunned. Other times things will get aggressive and fast right away and despite your best survival tricks you'll get spit out the back like a bite of rotten peach. Of course, today there was also the heat to consider, but at least the 9am start would make it less oppressive than the prior day's 2 pm master's event. There were a lot of riders in the Cat. 1,2,3 field who had ridden the master's race the prior day, including Realdo and Russ who had finished first and second in the 35+ and Frank and me who had finished first and second in the 45+. My plan for this race was pretty simple: conserve as much as possible, stay near the front on the hard climbs, and try to survive to the finish. I was glad to find that my legs felt pretty good following Saturday's race, so at least I knew I'd be able to handle the climbing.

The race was active and fast during the early laps on the short 5 mile loop and I was starting to wonder if I'd survive this one without getting dropped. My teammate Keith Duet was looking fairly comfortable, though, and always seemed to be in a good position. I guess it was around the fifth lap or so when, as we were going up the first climb near the feed zone, that I saw Frank Moak suddenly drop back. I didn't know if he'd had a flat or what had happened, but at any rate all my attention was focused on getting up the hill at the time. A little while later I saw him back in the pack and asked what had happened. He said he'd dropped his chain on the climb and thought he might have put a kink in it because it was occasionally skipping. I dropped back behind him and when he stopped pedaling I could see a really nasty kink in it. It was the kind of kink that was practically guaranteed to result in a broken chain. I told him to look down and when he did he knew his race was over. He dropped back and almost made it all the way back to the start, but it finally broke when he was climbing the steep little uphill onto the finish stretch. Anyway, after Frank dropped back (I swear the pack eased up and waited for him for a while) the race seemed to back off a notch and we had a lot of laps that were fairly smooth. That provided a lot of much-needed recovery for me, even though I knew it wouldn't last.

I guess we had about four laps to go when things started getting really aggressive again. For the rest of the race there were repeated attacks, chases, and counter-attacks, especially on and immediately after, the hilly section. When we went up the three hills after the feed zone with, I think, 4 to go, I put in a pretty hard effort and found myself with a fairly big gap but not nearly enough gas to try to hold it. I glanced back and saw a group coming up to me pretty fast, so I eased up for a moment to try and recover. As I heard the wheels approaching from behind I felt Realdo's hand on my back as he came past, encouraging me to latch on. We had a pretty nice group with a gap on the rest of the field and it was going well, although I wasn't much use myself. Even so, we were caught after a mile or two and the attacks continued.

Finally a break got off the front that included Realdo, Russ and Bain. This all happened within the last couple of laps, I guess, and although the rest of the pack was certainly not willing to give up, the break had riders from two of the more active teams in it. Meanwhile, I was figuring that the break wouldn't be caught and we'd end up with a big pack sprint for the leftovers. As we got close to the finish I saw Tim Regan and Matt Davis go shooting out of the pack. That's around where my memory gets fuzzy. I tried to go with them, but somehow, just before the 1 km mark, I ended up in-between and alone. Now you understand that there is no way in hell I can hold off the pack, which from my vantage point looked like a pack of hungry wolves waiting for an injured calf to collapse. I eased up hoping to be able to get back where I belonged before the sprint started, and just as I came around the final steep turn at about 400 meters, Kenny Bellau came past on the inside. He glanced over at me and eased up so I could catch his wheel and then basically lead me out for the sprint. The aforementioned wolves, however, were right behind us just waiting for the right moment to pounce. As we approached the 200 meter mark Kenny started to fade and for unknown reasons I hesitated for a moment. The wolves did not, and I could hear the "whoosh, whoosh" of sprinting tires all around me. I think I ended up around 3rd or 4th in the pack sprint, and was pretty happy with that result, especially since my primary goal of survival had been achieved. A few moments earlier, Realdo had won the sprint for first, with Russ taking second. That's amazing since it is the same order in which they had finished in Saturday's Master's race. But the real "tough guy" prize has to go to Diego Ortiz who, on Saturday rode the Junior race, placing 2nd, and then immediately lined up for the Cat. 5 race where he finished 3rd, and then got Shane to give him his upgrade to Cat. 4 so he could race the Sunday afternoon Cat. 4 race where he finished 3rd. Although I couldn't stay around long enough to see the finish of the Cat. 4s, I was there at the end of the first lap when teammate Brooks Abel rolled in with a broken chain. Man, those 10-speed chains really don't like being abused when people shift under load on the climbs!

I really enjoyed the races this weekend. The course there in the Natchez State Park is challenging enough to make for interesting racing, but not so intimitating to frighten off the riders who don't happen to be in top shape at that particular time. The race organization seemed even better than last year, and unlike the Texas Cat. 3 championships the same weekend, nobody got directed off course!!

No Man's Land

The combined Masters 30+, 35+, 45+ LAMBRA district championships road race started at 2 p.m. today in Natchez. The temperature at start time was around 92F, and as I waited on the line listening to the official give us the usual info I could feel a bead of sweat dripping down my face. The heat, however, didn't keep the race from getting fast right away. The first three or four laps of the short but hilly course were very fast. A couple of guys were off the front right away, and Realdo was out there for a while alone. Although they all eventually came back into the pack, it wasn't long before a solid little break got off the front. I tried to make the bridge up to it, but it was just too fast too long and I ended up stuck in "no man's land" and finally had to sit up and wait for the group. The break was flying and I, apparently, was not. So back in the pack there was some occasional action over the next lap or so, and I was expecting, or perhaps dreading, a strong attack from one of the Herring guys to try and bridge up. Finally, near the end of one of the laps, Realdo launched, taking a couple of guys with him. I went way over the redline trying to close the gap and made contact with the last guy just as we hit a short, steep climb up to a long, flat dam. The guy in front of me struggled and a gap opened. I couldn't go around until we made the hairpin turn at the top, and by the time I did the gap had grown and I was now trying to chase again, even though I was already on the rivet. This time, though, it was into a headwind on an unprotected road atop a dam. Well, I didn't last long and once again I was in "no man's land" and had to wait for the rest of the group.

The 6-rider break, consisting of four 35+, one 30+ and one 45+ riders, had some serious horsepower in it and I was angry with myself for not being able to hang with it or bridge up to it, or whatever. The pack didn't seem to have a whole lot of interest in mounting a serious chase, and I watched as the race rode off into the distance. The rest of our 45 mile race slowed down a bit, except for some hard efforts on the "big" climb each lap. With, I think, two laps to go we came over the top of the big hill rather splintered and when a small group formed off the front I got out my whip to try and get a break established, but even though we were going pretty good, we were still caught within a couple of miles.

So now it was looking like a pack sprint for the remaining spots. Near the end of the last lap Brett attacked and for a minute I thought he might get away because he was really flying, but he was finally caught. Things stayed fairly fast, though, and with a kilometer to go I was in a fairly good spot near the front. I guess I was third or fourth wheel coming around the hairpin turn onto the dam with maybe 400 meters to the line and when I finally sprinted at 200 meters I was surprised nobody came past me. So I think I ended up 7th overall, 2nd in the 45+ with Max finishing 12th.

Afterward I joined the Herring guys at a local Italian place called "Little Dego," where the waitress was a genuine Chalmetian and the pasta was good.

Tomorrow I'll start the 70-something mile Cat. 1,2,3 race. Whether I'll finish or not, though, is anybody's guess.

In the Cat. 5 race, that finished just before we started, Quentin was 4th and Jorge was 6th, so that was pretty good. Vivian was 2nd in the masters women, and Ed K was 15th.

Morning Race

I was up early this morning and was happily enjoying the opportunity to roll easily through the back streets out to the levee ... until I heard the train whistle. I had just turned onto Willow street, maybe eight blocks from the railroad crossing. It's hard to tell the direction from which the sound is coming in amongst the houses and as I picked up my pace I glanced down the side streets to the left. I could see the levee, so that meant it was an inbound train. A couple of blocks later I saw it cross ahead of me and knew I'd lost the morning race. It was a long, empty train, but at least it was moving along fairly well. Even with the delay, I was the first up on the levee, unless you count the homeless guy who was still there sitting on a pipe reading his bible. I was surprised that the Jefferson Parish police hadn't made him leave yet. Adam and Dan arrived and, being a Friday, that was it. So we did a nice easy ride today, picking up a couple of other riders here and there. Dan's a bit of a bird expert, so I asked him about the huge nests that were up on the cellphone tower platforms and he told me they were communal Monk Parakeet (aka Parrot) nests. Those are the loud green illegal alien birds that like to hang around the Palmetto trees around here. They make these huge multi-chambered nests. Sort of like people with their hi-rise Florida beach condos. So Adam and I chatted about officiating stuff and that sort of thing, debating the actual wording of the infamous Criterium lapped rider rule, and the wisdom of requiring races to provide two back numbers for the riders, and by the time we got back to the start the homeless guy was gone. Could be he just sleeps there between the two big pipe things (they must be pumps and perhaps some kind of siphon to get the water from the river over the levee to the Carrollton water purification plant).

Anyway, it felt really hot and humid by the time I got home today. It's already 87F with 62% relative humidity and a south wind, and although I know there are a whole lot of warmer days yet to come, it still feels good to complain about it.

On the Porch, Pondering

It's 9:30 pm and I'm sitting on the front porch, an almost empty wine glass in my hand and a dinner of seafood gumbo in my stomach. My skin feels warm and sticky and off to my right I can hear my neighbor who came out onto his porch a moment ago talking on his telephone. Across the street, another neighbor was waiting for a friend to arrive and they just drove off in the direction of the French Quarter. The air is thick and still and sultry and has yet to drop below 80F. The leaves on the oak tree are motionless and the only movement on the street is a cat lazily patrolling the neighborhood. The smell of sweet olive hangs in the air, easily overpowering the Merlot, and I think I am a little bit lucky to be here. Apparently I've had too much to drink. We are starting to get into the meat of the summer now. It's already too warm in the morning to wear my "work" shirt during my short commute, and even though I've slowed my commuting pace down to the level of a little old Italian lady on her way back from the market, I still arrive damp with sweat. Yesterday I washed out the pads and straps of my helmet to get rid of the odor of stale sweat, and my gloves are getting pretty ripe after only a few days of riding. Yeah, summer's here.

My plans for this weekend's road races up near Natchez have yet to be made, but somehow I'll find my way there I suppose. The state championship course, more properly the 2-state championship course, is hilly enough to provide opportunities for the strong riders to wreak havoc, yet not so bad as to be too demoralizing for the rest of us. I'll ride the 45+ age group as usual on Saturday, and we will race together with the 35+ riders, and, if turnout is low, perhaps also with the 30+. It will probably be one of the largest groups of the weekend, and I expect the race will be fairly hard. Just how hard it turns out to be will likely determine whether I stick around for Sunday's Cat. 1,2,3 race. Am I ready? Ha! I haven't felt truly "ready" since some time in the 80s.

Summer Surge

The Wednesday training ride on the levee has been getting more and more popular lately. I suppose that, like the bowl of porridge in Goldilocks, it's not too hot, not too cold, but just right. Of course, this time of year there is always a big surge of riders. Some of them are just now getting into shape after extended winter hibernation, and I guess others are trying to add some more mileage prior to the LAMBRA road championships next weekend and Tour de Louisiane the two weeks after that.

When I arrived for the ride this morning there was already a good sized crowd. Interestingly it included a homeless guy with a brakeless yellow Jeep mountain bike, apparently rescued from the trash, and six or seven plastic bags of homeless guy stuff. He seemed like a nice guy and I'm sorry I arrived too late to hear his story. By the time we were a few miles down the road the size of the group had surged to at least twenty riders, which is really big for this little morning ride. The relatively easy pace, together with the conversation that a double paceline always encourages, made the ride rather enjoyable. I have to admit, though, that toward the end I was feeling like I hadn't gotten quite as much of a workout as I'd hoped for. It did give me the opportunity to take a few photos, though.

Yesterday evening we went over to my dad's house and for some reason they decided to go to a nearby restaurant for dinner. I wondered if that was such a good idea, but hey, what do I know? Well, it was pretty much of a disaster, and I'll spare you the details, but we ended up having them pack up our order "to go" and take it back to the house. We, and especially The Wife, have had to start getting into the health insurance and doctor issues since we are coming to find out that a lot of things are falling through the cracks. It really seems like there's an attitude of just writing off the old folks. The outpatient physical therapy place is telling them that the doctor only authorized one session of PT, which makes no sense at all, of course. All I can say is that these folks don't want to mess with The Wife on this.

Pictures Not Taken

Sometimes, having a camera in your jersey pocket is nothing more than a source of frustration. Today I snapped a quick image of an interesting dawn sky as the group waited to start its Tuesday levee ride. It would be the only picture taken today. The really good pictures, and there were a few of them, were not taken. In fact, they couldn't have been taken unless I'd had a camera implanted in my forehead. They were great shots, though.

The first picture not taken was of the long 15-rider paceline ahead of me as it made a graceful arc around the country club where the river curves sharply north. The morning sun illuminated the string of brightly colored jerseys as the riders followed each other at neat six-inch intervals. The picture came up suddenly and at 27 mph there was no chance to reach for the camera before the scene, and the draft, was lost.

The big group made for fast speeds today. I hovered near the tail end where the accumulation of little gaps and surges and slowdowns cause the famous accordion effect most noticible in criteriums. My legs were not quite recovered from the weekend's abuse, so I had decided to stay off the front today. By the time we were approaching the "dip," though, the number of riders dropping back in search of shelter was increasing and I was already around mid-pack. We zipped down the levee at the dip and back up the other side, and just as I hit the top again I heard someone behind me yell "flat!" I looked ahead and yelled it to the front part of the group but got no response, so I coasted a bit and finally turned around to see what happened. Well, what had happened wasn't a flat at all, instead it was another picture not taken of Donald sliding in the damp morning grass after hitting a grapefruit-sized lump of clay. Luckily he had missed the various sign posts and other immovable objects in his path and so the damage was minimal. We rode easy up the levee and finally turned around when we saw the remnant of the front group coming the other way.

The speed soon ramped up again for a while but eventually the group started to break up. We passed a little box turtle that was sitting in the middle of the bike path and Donald stopped to move him to safety. I thought at first that he would take the turtle home in his jersey pocket (he's done it before) to help populate his pond. It would have made a nice picture if I could have caught him picking up the turtle, but I just wasn't quick enough. A little while later VJ flatted and at that point just a few of us hung around to assist. The rest of the group went on its way since time was starting to get short.

This afternoon I was looking out over the city from my perch high atop the Tidewater Building and noticed a French flag flying near the river. I couldn't see the ship is was on, but then I saw this in the local TV website:

The French warship "La Fayette" and its crew are in New Orleans this week to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of the Marquis de La Fayette, a French aristocrat who fought in America's War of Independence. The French warship "La Fayette" and its crew are in New Orleans this week to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of the Marquis de La Fayette, a French aristocrat who fought in America's War of Independence.

Ain't Bike Racin' Fun?

A long time ago, back around the Nixon administration, I was ending my swimming career and getting into this bizarre euro bike racing thing. Most people thought I was a little weird. They were right. Anyway, I remember thinking that I was only going to do this as long as it was still fun. Then, some time around the mid-80's a venerable local cyclist named Jim Bergin, who was actually older than me if you can believe that, exclaimed one day after a training race, in his finest faux-redneck accent "ain't bike racin' fun?" That line's always stuck with me for some reason, maybe because it is.

So Sunday we walked across the street from the Alexandria Holiday Inn to the Racing Rapides Criterium. After the Cat. 5s, Women and Juniors had finished they lined us old guys up for 40 minutes on a good, fast criterium course. The circuit was a long one -- a bit over a mile, I think -- and included eight turns and two long 4-block straights on mostly smooth asphalt through the old downtown riverfront area of Alexandria. It wasn't long before Colorado rider Scott Hendricks, still smarting from his mis-timed finish the day before, attacked hard. Next thing I knew I was in a 3-man break with Scott and Rich Raspet. The trio worked together well, building up a lead of a minute or so, before the sheep's clothing started to wear thin. First, I noticed Rich was taking slower and shorter pulls. Meanwhile, Scott started trying to pit Rich and me against each other reminding each that the other could win the overall (on points) but that he couldn't. Soon, Scott started skipping pulls, so I knew what was coming next. Sure enough, he attacked -- numerous times. We were able to keep him in check, though. His last try came on the bell lap and so we came around the final corner, a good 4 blocks of headwind from the finish, with him in front and me behind Rich. He jumped fairly early, right after clearing the turn, and Rich hesitated a bit, opening a fairly large gap. I sat there for a second (too long) and finally came around Rich but never could get within a couple of bike lengths of Scott. Still, I ended up winning the omnium and Mark D. won the pack sprint which put him into 4th in the omnium. It was fun.

Next I watched the 35+ criterium which looked to be really fast and aggressive. Then, with just three laps or so remaining, Jaro rolled the dice trying to close a gap on a corner and came up with snake eyes, going down hard and making a big split in the field. The guys in front made it to the finish together. In back, Eddie C had gotten tangled up in the crash and had to go in for a wheel change after the free laps had ended. Hate it when that happens. It seemed to me that Keith had spent most of the race on the front chasing things down, but he still put in a good sprint to take 5th in the stage and 4th overall.

Now, as the temperatures and dehydration status climbed, it was time to shift up a couple of cogs and enter the Cat. 1,2,3 criterium. It's particularly fun sometimes to enter a second criterium like that, especially when your game plan involves a lot of sitting on the back, ignoring the breaks, and swooping through the corners in the draft. I was a little worried about this one, though, because the field was fairly small -- I think only 18 -- and the draft would probably be in short supply. From the start things heated up and I found myself pulling back a few breaks before reality set in and I decided I'd better seek more shelter if I was going to survive a whole hour at a good 2 mph faster than the masters race had been. After a flurry of attacks, a break of six or seven formed and started to roll away. I did some work to try and keep them within range, but few were willing to help so I set up my tent at the back for some recovery time. The LaSport guys were pretty busy, launching occasional attacks, and although we were shedding riders off the back, nobody else got away. When they started putting up the lap cards at 4 to go, the pace went up a notch and I couldn't resist working my way up closer to the front. I guess I came around the last turn about three or four back and ended up getting 2nd in the field sprint which, as it turned out, was good for 7th.

As I was putting the bike in Mark's truck the an awesome thunderstorm suddenly whipped through, blowing over the officials' table and everything on it, including computer and printer. I had just enough time to jump into the car before the rain got bad and since it was already getting late and I had a 3.5 hour drive home, I headed for the highway before the results were posted. By the time I had stopped off at my father's house and dropped Mark's truck off at his house, it was around 9:00 when I finally got into the shower and washed off a good day's worth of salt and sweat.